BagelFest

By: © Nelson Taylor 2008

Festival Location: Mattoon, IL, USA

Festival State: Illinois Festivals

Festival Type(s): Food and Drink Festivals , Food Festivals, Bizarre Festivals

Mattoon is the home of marvelous Murray Lender, whose local Lender's Bagels factory employs most of the town. So you can see why in Mattoon there is no God but the Murray man and his bread of heaven. Since 1986, Murray has hosted BagelFest every July.

It's a weekend-long event dedicated to the almighty. Some 40,000 people show up for Murray's largest free bagel breakfast in the world and woof down 70,000 bagels. For the 10th Anniversary of BagelFest, Murray set out to make the world's biggest bagel, which made Guinness Book of World Records. It weighed in at a whopping 563 pounds. But that didn't stop old Murray. Put a little fire in a man's pants and it's tough to put out. So in 1998 Murray made "The World's Berry Biggest Bagel," which weighed in at an unbelievable 765 pounds. So, what's this man around Mattoon got up his sleeve next? Well, that's a secret. You'll have to roll to BagelFest to find out. (It also mustn't go unsaid that the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra have entertained at recent BagelFests.)